The present volume comprises thirteen of the papers delivered at RICAN
5, which was held in Rethymnon, Crete, on May 25-26,2009. The theme of
the volume, ' The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient
Novel, ' allows the contributors the freedom to use their skills to
examine the real and the ideal either individually or in conjunction or
in interaction. The papers offer a wide and rich range of perspectives:
a political reading of prose fiction in Late Period Egypt (Selden); the
presence of robbers and murderers in ideal fiction (Dowden); the
interaction between illusion and reality in novelistic ekphrasis
(Zeitlin); divine loves as real precedents for human loves (Rosati);
comical elements in Heliodorus' Aethiopika (Doody);myths as paradigms
for the inexperienced lovers in the Greek novels (Létoublon); moral
ideas in the Odyssey and the Greek novels in relation to moralizing
interpretations of Homer (Montiglio); the reality of the basic plot of
Callirhoe in the light of historical events and Aristotle's Poetics
(Paschalis); the interaction between fictionality and reality in Daphnis
and Chloe (Bowie); entrapment and insu fficient understanding of reality
in the Satyrica (Labate); fantasy, physical and ideal landscapes in
Apuleius' Metamorphoses (König); bridging the gap between Photis (real)
and Isis (ideal) in Apuleius (Carver); the gendered aesthetics of the
Greek novels viewed through the lens of the mimetic theory of Dionysius
of Halicarnassus (Whitmarsh).
